Why AWS?

The cloud platforms are continuing to mature. Google and Microsoft have their strong cloud platform offerings. While Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure have their own strengths, they are not as comprehensive as the AWS stack. After experimenting with all the 3 platforms for years, we concluded AWS offers the best of the breed. In addition, we also had the opportunity to work with smaller players such as Digital Ocean and Rackspace. Specifically, we analyzed the following :

Trial Period

Performance

Pricing

Reliability

Security

Dynamism

Deployment

Dynamism

The services offered by AWS can be picked as needed and its flexibility in accommodating an infrastructure steak is new to the IT industry. Almost all of the services can be invoked via CLI (Command Level Interface), API (Application Programming Interface) provided by AWS. One can quickly build an infrastructure to run an app with decent performance in a few hours. It can then be optimized or redone without much impact to the production.

Deployment

AWS provides the ability to create AMI – Amazon Machine Image – are awesome for deploying at record speeds. The AMIs can also be used to dynamically create server instances just needed for a particular time period. For example, if you are about to get national press on your cool new app, you may want greater scalability during the few days with tens of thousands of downloads. AWS makes this task super easy.

Performance

AWS brings performance to your deployed applications without breaking the bank (See next section for the Pricing). Hourly rate charges are made for the Xeon-class computing units known as EC2. It is not just that, the storage service – S3 – supports millions of input/output operations per second in all instances. From something common as EBS, all the way to, something unique as the voice service Polly, the performance across the board is simply amaz(on)ing.

Trial Period

Amazon is generous with the Trial period. Called FREE tier, AWS provides 12 months of their entire stack. This shows the commitment by Amazon for the intended userbase to try their platform before committing to it. One can build decent proof-of-concept applications with the services under the Free tier.

Security

IAM and VPC. These two features are key to making the AWS bullet-proof. Identity and Access Management, in short IAM, gives granular control to manage who can do what in the infrastructure. Virtual Private Network, in short VPC, provides a total isolation for all the resources for your company.

Pricing

The pricing structure of AWS is truly a reflection of the utility billing. You pay for just what you consume. In some of the services, the first segment of the service comes as free as well. Such “a la carte” model brings a lot of relief to those who are responsible for infrastructure, especially in startups. Gone are the days when you had to go to the highest configuration your budget will allow and see it unutilized 90% of the time as you ramp up.

Reliability

AWS has a massive global infrastructure. These are located in different regions and one can strategically choose the region to architect their infrastructure for reliable failover of the applications. The Multi AZ feature supports replication of any known database, the auto-scaling ability takes care of application/web service layer of the application. Bottomline: Your CTO can sleep a bit more peacefully with your stack is deployed and running on AWS.

Our expertise in AWS

We have applied our expertise in AWS in getting the following done :

Architecting architecture for API stacks

Application migration to AWS

Mobile app backend

Voice applications

AWS Consulting

Some of our notable accomplishments in AWS are covered in our blog. Please read them. And if you need more info, please contact us.

Our passion is about your success and we are dedicated to making your business stronger. Our global workforce and skilled technical staff enable us to meet the technically challenging and aggressive project delivery timelines. The foundation of our success is delivering solutions using: AWS, Ethereum and RedTie.